1/17/2011

Writers' League of Texas Announces 2010 Book Award Winners

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Jan Baumer, Programming Manager
512-499-8914
jan@writersleague.org

Austin, TX - The Writers' League of Texas has announced the winners of the 2010 WLT Book Awards honoring outstanding books published in the United States. The awards are presented annually to authors in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Literary Prose and Poetry, and Children's Books. The 2010 winners are:

• Fiction: Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories, by Lorraine M. Lopez, Nashville, TN (BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City, November 2009)
• Nonfiction: Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith, Austin, TX (PublicAffairs, November 2009)
• Children's: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose, Portland, ME (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 2009)
• Poetry & Literary Prose: Quiver, by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, Montclair, NJ (University of Georgia Press, March 2009)

(For more details on the winners, please see below)

The winners each receive a commemorative award and a cash prize of $1,000. The 2010 Writers' League of Texas Book Awards contest is sponsored by the University Co-op. The WLT extends its heartfelt gratitude to the Co-op for their support and generosity. "The Writers' League is pleased to continue the tradition of recognizing excellence in books," said WLT Executive Director Cyndi Hughes. "This year's contest had the most submissions ever, and once again, the quality of the books is outstanding. We would also like to thank University Co-op for returning as a sponsor of the contest."
 
Until 2008 the Writers' League of Texas Book Awards were known as the Violet Crown Awards and the Teddy Children's Book Awards. Past winners for fiction and nonfiction include University of Oklahoma professor, novelist, and fiction writer Rilla Askew, Texas Monthly columnist and novelist Sarah Bird, mystery author Mary Willis Walker, novelist Amanda Eyre Ward, novelist Clay Reynolds, poet Jack Myers, journalist Carlton Stowers, and NPR commentator Marion Winik. Past children's winners have included Kathi Appelt, Diane Gonzalez Bertrand, Angela Shelf Medearis, Kimberly Willis Holt, John Erickson, and Margo Rabb.
 
The League is now accepting submissions for the 2011 Book Awards for books published in 2010. Guidelines and entry forms are posted on the Writers' League Web site at www.writersleague.org.

The Writers' League of Texas is a nonprofit professional organization that provides a community for information, support, and sharing among writers. The organization assists its 1,400 members throughout the United States in improving and marketing their writing.  Among the League's signature initiatives are the annual Writers' League of Texas Agents Conference, the annual Writers' League of Texas Book Awards, Project WISE (Writers in Schools for Enrichment), and the Summer Writing Retreat in Alpine, along with ongoing workshops and classes.The Writers' League of Texas is funded in part by the City of Austin, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For more, visit the League's Web site at www.writersleague.org.

About the 2010 WLT winners:

Phillip Hoose is the widely-acclaimed author of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles, including the National Book Award and Newbery Honor winning book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

Hoose is also the author of the multi-award winning title, The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, the National Book Award Finalist, We Were There Too!: Young People in U.S. History, and the Christopher Award-winning manual for youth activism, It's Our World, Too!

A graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Hoose has been a staff member of The Nature Conservancy since 1977, dedicated to finding and protecting habitats of endangered species. A songwriter and performing musician, Phillip Hoose is a founding member of the Children's Music Network and a member of the band Chipped Enamel. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Lorraine M. Lopez is an associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review and an associate professor of English teaching in the MFA program in creative writing at Vanderbilt University.  Her short story collection, Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (Curbstone Press), won the inaugural Miguel Marmól Prize for fiction.  Her second book, Call Me Henri (Curbstone Press), was awarded the Paterson Prize for Young Adult Literature, and her novel, The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters (Grand Central Press), was a Borders/Las Comadres selection for the month in 2008.  López's short story collection, Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories (BkMk Press), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize in Fiction in 2010.  She has also edited a collection of essays titled An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor or Working-Class Roots (University of Michigan Press).  Her forthcoming works include a novel, The Realm of the Hungry Spirits, due out from Grand Central Press in May 2011, and a collection of essays, The Other Latino, co-edited with Blas Falconer, which will be released in fall of 2011 from the University of Arizona Press.  

Bill Minutaglio is the author and co-author of several nonfiction books, most recently In Search of the Blues: A Journey to the Soul of Black Texas, which has been selected as a Book of the Month selection by the Bob Bullock State History Museum's Book It, Texas! Club (and will be read by book club members in February). He is co-author of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, which is the winner of The Writers' League of Texas' nonfiction book award for 2010. He is author of biographies of President George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, as well as City on Fire, a narrative nonfiction book about the greatest industrial disaster in American history. His books have been published in China, optioned by actor Tom Cruise and excerpted by The New York Times and other publications. Esquire named City on Fire one of the greatest tales of survival ever written. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Esquire, Texas Monthly, Outside, Details, Men's Health, The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists and many other publications. He is a clinical professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin and a columnist for The Texas Observer.

W. Michael Smith was Molly Ivins's researcher and assistant for six years.  He has worked with the Fort Worth Star Telegram, writer Gail Sheehy and staffers from the New York Times, the BBC, PBS Frontline, and ARD Germany.

Susan B.A. Somers-Willett is the author of two critically acclaimed books of poetry and a book of criticism. Her first book of poetry, Roam, won the Crab Orchard Review Award series in 2006 and was a finalist for the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for poetry. Her second book, Quiver, published in 2009 with the University of Georgia Press as part of the VQR Series in Poetry, received the 2010 Writers' League of Texas Book Award. Her book of criticism, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America (University of Michigan Press, 2009) has been cited by The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. Somers-Willett's writing has been featured in The Iowa Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Poets & Writers, and The New Yorker.

Somers-Willett holds an A.B. from Duke University, and an M.A. in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. She has received fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Center for Arts in Society. Her other honors include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, VQR's Emily Clark Balch Poetry Prize, a Gracie Award, and a Pushcart nomination. She currently teaches creative writing and poetics as an assistant professor of english at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

To schedule interviews, or obtain images please contact Jan Baumer at jan@writersleague.org or 512-499-8914.

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